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Yesterday was pretty damned good on the solar generation front, my second highest day ever, so here are some pretty pictures.

My generation curve is lumpy due to shading impact at various points of the day and as the West facing panels come into play in the afternoon, but my SolarEdge does the best it can.

It's interesting looking at my battery monitor graph for the day too - you can see my "run the dishwasher during the E7 period" electricity demand around 1am, where the import is being lessened by the maximum the PowerVault can push out (still had plenty of charge left when we went to bed).

Then you can see the battery starts taking charge around 6.45am as the solar wakes up.At 7.10am someone uses the 3kW kettle (not me, I use my 1kW one to minimise import, which is the PowerVault export spike around 7.40am, but the rest of my family, not so much!)Then after that, everyone leaves the house and the Powervault sucks up as much charge as it can - 800W is the charging limit on my system. Happily, the rest of the solar generation is then grabbed hold of by my ImmerSUN up until just before noon when it's clearly heated up the hot water tank sufficiently. So for the rest of the afternoon, we see occasional spikes of high grid export, with short periods of lower grid export as the ImmerSUN keeps the immersion ticking over topping up the hot water tank. And also you can see the battery charging input tailing down as it reaches full charge by 6pm.

At 6pm, the family starts arriving home and stuff gets switched on, so the PowerVault starts discharging in response. TV, PS4, lights, computer, toaster, and microwave all kicking in throughout the evening.

All good fun I think.

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3.06kWp SolarEdge system with a split array: 2.18kWp 10x South facing, plus 4x West facing 880W

So the graph showing import/export is the PowerVault monitoring portal. It's rather clunky and with everything jammed together on the same axis is hard to work out what's going on sometimes. I fed back to them about 2 years ago that import and export should be in different directions on the y-axis as that shows current flow more intuitively, but they seem stuck on this visual representation.

I guess if every device had its own IoT IP or MAC address you could determine what device was doing what at any particular time automatically, or perhaps "smart plugs", or if you put current clamps on the supply cables to every device in the home and connected them all up to a custom monitor (like a EnergyMon) you could probably do that, but you'd have to be totally obsessed!

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3.06kWp SolarEdge system with a split array: 2.18kWp 10x South facing, plus 4x West facing 880W

Yeah, mine is a 4KW lead acid model - I was a very early adopter - so it charges at a max of 800W but can discharge at a maximum of 1100W. It seems low (certainly compared to the Powerwall!), but it does mean that on a good day like this there's enough surplus to be able to heat the ImmerSUN as well as charge the battery.

Which device measures grid in/out power? It's quite fascinating to see the in/out flow during the day.

The cyan and blue lines were difficult to distinguish for me, but I got what was happening.

A cool feature would be knowing what each device consumed - then toasters, electric showers and tumble dryers would be abandoned en masse.

Paul

I'm going to disagree with yur last sentence a bit. The numbers might make people think, and educate them some, but I don't believe for one second that the'y abandon showers, or toast. What other ways of getting hot water are there? Of making toast? I agree with Tumble dryers. Devils spawn. Whats wrong with old fashoined clothes lines?

Make your own bread (with electric while the sun shines) and the loaves come out hot. It's not crunchy, but warm homemade bread is really nice.

Navitron have a great range of solar thermal panels - our 30 tubes give free hot water April to October. Sunny winter days will make the water warm enough for a shower. Our electric shower was toast (ha ha) soon after the solar thermal panel was plumbed in. I replaced it with a gravity shower and pump, saving 8.5kW.

My grandmother had twin washing lines! We raised 3 daughters and have never owned a tumble drier and never will.

We had it rough. Baths in the kitchen sink, mum and gran said they slept in the Anderson shelter when the bombs dropped.

Make your own bread (with electric while the sun shines) and the loaves come out hot. It's not crunchy, but warm homemade bread is really nice.

Navitron have a great range of solar thermal panels - our 30 tubes give free hot water April to October. Sunny winter days will make the water warm enough for a shower. Our electric shower was toast (ha ha) soon after the solar thermal panel was plumbed in. I replaced it with a gravity shower and pump, saving 8.5kW.

My grandmother had twin washing lines! We raised 3 daughters and have never owned a tumble drier and never will.

We had it rough. Baths in the kitchen sink, mum and gran said they slept in the Anderson shelter when the bombs dropped.

So the graph showing import/export is the PowerVault monitoring portal. It's rather clunky and with everything jammed together on the same axis is hard to work out what's going on sometimes. I fed back to them about 2 years ago that import and export should be in different directions on the y-axis as that shows current flow more intuitively, but they seem stuck on this visual representation.

I guess if every device had its own IoT IP or MAC address you could determine what device was doing what at any particular time automatically, or perhaps "smart plugs", or if you put current clamps on the supply cables to every device in the home and connected them all up to a custom monitor (like a EnergyMon) you could probably do that, but you'd have to be totally obsessed!

Sounds like you've been using PowerVault for a while. Pleased with the savings? I'm thinking of getting one myself (4kw array on roof), so just curious. Any thoughts on the GridFlex aspect that the likes of EDF offer?

Sorry only just read the reply!Had the PowerVault since Dec 2016. Have kind of got used to the idea of what it can and can't do with its 4kWh capacity - but I get an average of 110kWh out of it every month which I would have otherwise drawn from the grid and I've dabbled with E7 charging a bit. My model of Powervault isn't the new shiny PV3 so the controls are not as sophisticated (doesn't have GridFlex).

I went into this knowing full well I was at the early end of the early adopter curve so was unlikely to be as a financially sensible "investment", but I've learned a lot, I've participated in two DNO trials with the battery so the industry is learning a lot, and I feel like I'm doing something else to be a bit less of a heavy consumer. It still allows my ImmerSUN to work too, which is great as at this time of year I also get a full tank of hot water for free as well.

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3.06kWp SolarEdge system with a split array: 2.18kWp 10x South facing, plus 4x West facing 880W